Heroes in Crisis wraps up on Wednesday. King recently spoke with Russ Burlingame, the Internet's #1 Booster Gold reporter, about the series' origins.

Burlingame: This all started with Harley and Booster, and you talked a lot about how much you love those characters and obviously you've gotten to write them a lot. How strange has it been that you spent six months elevating those characters, and now the big takeaway is like "holy s--t, Wally!"?

King: You go back to what I did with Booster in the beginning, and I did it in Batman. It was like "what? What did you do to Booster? You made him so terrible." And now as you see in Heroes in Crisis, he came back from being terrible and now he's kicking ass again. This was always about those three characters. It was a Harley story, a Wally story, and was a Booster story. As I've said many times before, I don't pick the characters for my story; I give my plot to the editors and then the editors pick the characters for me. So I told them in the beginning, "this is what it's going to be -- it's going to be about one hero who's made a mistake and it's going to be about the two heroes that get framed for that mistake." And they said, "okay, it's Booster, Harley, and Wally, those are the three characters." I mean they're a joy to write, I love writing them. That's almost what I miss the most about this book is writing those two. Booster is the most fun character in comics, except maybe Hal Jordan.

I'm pleased that DC editorial is always looking for new places to put Booster Gold. (How about a team book with, say, Blue Beetle?)

You can read the whole interview at ComicBook.com.

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Dan Jurgens recently spoke to Russ Burlingame about the 25th anniversary of the release of Superman/Doomsday: Hunter/Prey. Booster Gold played no role in that series, yet according to Jurgens, he sort of does.

Burlingame: It feels like, even though this is a very stand-alone book, the Waverider stuff plays into the bigger theme of the Linear Men at that time in the books, which is, "Do something, you jerks."

Jurgens: Right. It's weird, I think I probably didn't realize it at the time, but I look back at this now, and realize that what I was doing, I should say, was assembling a group of characters that I created that would function in that world. I think Jim Starlin did a great job of this. When he was doing Captain Marvel, when he was doing Warlock, he created all these characters. They became very much a part of his writing language, and his visual language. All that stuff existed to the extent that it was Jim Starlin-world. Now we see that times 5,000 on the screen. I think what I was doing was a lot of the same thing, which is I said that I have all these characters that interact and they make sense to me. They don't just have to interact once in November of 1992 and then we never see them again. We can use them to address different ideas and different topics.

They became very much a part of -- this is going to sound real egotistical, and I don't want it to-- it becomes part of like "Jurgensverse," as far as I was approaching Superman a little bit. It made sense to me. Whereas at that time, it might have been [convenience], I look back on it now a little differently. It made sense in a lot of different ways. These are the characters I wanted to continue to explore, and there was no reason they had to interact once and then not interact again.

Burlingame: And a lot of these characters and ideas you would continue to work with all the way up through the mid-2000s with your Booster Gold run.

Jurgens: Also, if you look at Waverider, which was a co-creation with Archie Goodwin, you have all these things that fit together and work. think it's a group of concepts that have been probably under-used by DC. I think there's a lot more than could have been done with it, and fortunately that stuff is still out there, so there's a lot more that can be done with it. I think concepts like the Linear Men, like Vanishing Point, and all that stuff, I think that's the kind of thing that has a place in comics. I think there's some cool things there that can still be exploited, still be used.

There's a lot to unpack in just those few paragraphs, and that's only a tiny snippet of the interview. (By all means, read the whole thing on ComicBook.com.)

The most important thing there, obviously, is that we should be calling Jurgens' oeuvre "The Jurgensverse," and that all the characters in it always were, and always will be, connected. That somewhere in 2019, Trixie Collins could pass Mitchell Anderson in the produce aisle of their local supermarket and give him advice on the best way to pick out a grapefruit, that thought makes me very happy.

It's also worth noting that Jurgens believes that Time Masters and their story-telling conceit of policing history remains an untapped source for future stories in the DCrU. That should be encouraging to fans of Booster (and Jurgens' work), as it means that the possibility still exists to revisit the characters and concepts (and unanswered mysteries) of Booster Gold Volume 2.

Here's to the future!

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Russ Burlingame reporting for Comicbook.com from the Tom King panel at New York Comic Con on Saturday:

"Booster Gold and Ted Kord will be getting back together in Heroes in Crisis, and King says he is looking forward to that."

Blue and Gold together again? I should be all "whoo-hoo!" But considering Tom King and the context of Heroes in Crisis....

We will see what we will see.

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Newsarama.com has the November solicitations for DC Comics, and it looks like we'll be getting another rematch between two of DC's best heroes.

HEROES IN CRISIS #3
written by TOM KING
art and cover by CLAY MANN
variant cover by RYAN SOOK
The Man of Steel versus...Booster Gold?! Superman finds out the hard way that Booster can be a formidable opponent when his back's against the wall. Of course, being the prime suspect in a superhero massacre and exposing a secret trauma hospital for metahumans will do just that. Meanwhile, Batman and the Flash combine their detective skills to investigate what went awry at Sanctuary and uncover a serious glitch in the system—not to mention an explosive, spoiler-ific secret!
ON SALE November 28 · $3.99

Russ Burlingame writes about what this solicitation means for the "who will die" aspect of this series at ComicBook.com. (Warning: Link could be considered to contain spoilers.) Since Russ has that angle covered, I'm going to focus on what's really important here: the fight between the Man of Steel and the Booster of Gold.

In Round One (Booster Gold #7, 1986), Superman (with a timely assist from Skeets) taught upstart Booster Gold a necessary lesson in how a hero acts.

In Round Two (Action Comics Annual #4, 1992), Booster was outclassed by Superman, who was at the time in the thrall of Eclipso.

In Round Three, (Booster Gold #8, 2008), Superman, this time controlled by Max Lord, ambushed and made short work of Booster and his makeshift team of Freedom Fighters.

Of course, all of those previous fights were wiped from history by Flashpoint, so Heroes in Crisis #3 isn't technically a rematch. (As pointed out by @FAdamF on Twitter, much of what happened before Flashpoint is still part of most characters' history thanks to Rebirth. Therefore, these fights did *technically* happen, even if no one quite remembers it.) Given Booster's dismal record in this match-up, that might be a good thing.

We'll find out if Booster can finally defeat the Metropolis Marvel this November.

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I've seen references to Booster pop up on quite a few sites this week. Rather than spotlight any one of them and leave the others out, I'll just share what I've found and let you visit whatever you think sounds good.

Nick Kazdan has a gallery of their picks to play Booster Gold on the big screen. (HeroicHollywood.com)

Shaun Manning speculates on whether Booster Gold is now "One of DC's Most Important Heroes." (CBR.com)

Tim Adams speculates on Booster's role (and Hal Jordan's death) in upcoming issues of Batman. (CBR.com)

Edward Wallace counts Booster's force field among the "Most Powerful Weapons in the DC Comic Book Universe."(FortressofSolitude.co.za)

Russ Burlingame is careful to include a Booster Gold appearance in his list of essential Dan Jurgens' Superman reading as Action Comics approaches issue #1000. (Comicbook.com).

Booster Gold returns in the latest chapter of Injustice 2 (Chapter 40) now available digitally for 99¢. (Comixology.com)

Now you've got something to read between your green beers tomorrow, Booster boosters! Enjoy your St. Patrick's Day weekend.

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